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Rayyan Mill farmer picking coffee cherries
Haraaz Cooperative® farmer with bags of coffee cherries

Rayyan Mill versus Haraaz Cooperative®

We got a great email for you. Story below, but coffee options first:

Rayyan Mill Coffees:

Haraaz Cooperative Coffees:

Keep reading for a longish-form coffee story.

The Perverse Incentives of Transparency

The world of Yemeni coffee is fascinating for so many reason. (Anda here, the owner.) I want to take you on a deep dive into the niche of transparency in the supply chain.

This is not the story you expected. Let's have some fun.

Coffee cherries on branch (photo by Haraaz Cooperative)

When we think of transparency, we think of honesty, integrity, and knowing who produced our coffee. We think of those two farmers pictured at the top of this email. This is a simple enough concept.

But we quickly get into the world of bruised egos, business competition, shell companies, and lawsuits. It's nuts because you never would have guessed it.

The Yemen coffee universe that you see is just what is visible above the water line. Let's look at the ridiculousness that is lurking just out of sight. This is a story of incentives.

I've been doing Yemeni coffee full-time since 2013. When I first started, I was the only retailer specializing in this product. One of my suppliers—Andrew at the Rayyan Mill—said this to me in 2018: When you told me five years ago that you wanted to start a retail company specializing exclusively in Yemeni coffee, I thought it was a horrible idea.

That's right, the folks supplying the Rayyan Mill Blend thought my business was a horrible idea.

Andrew, manager of the Rayyan Mill, on the left. He thought Al Mokha might go out of business.

Since getting started so many years ago, I've observed tens of companies entering this niche of exclusive focus on Yemen's coffee. I've been mostly agnostic, just observing and doing my own thing. I'm interested in international development and at the extreme end—and very honestly—I don't believe in Yemen's coffee sector but I believe in finding things that work. If coffee is good at a fair price, let's do it. If it's bad and overpriced, find a better opportunity to encourage economic growth.

So in this way, while I think coffee is a great opportunity, my motivations are a bit different than the usual coffee company. I'm competing in coffee primarily for reasons of international development.

In contrast, my coffee competitors are competing for coffee reasons. They are a product of the coffee world, that tattooed barista at your local shop brewing coffee with the seriousness of a bench scientist.

My competitor is the World Bank (if I flatter myself); their competitor is the coffee-obsessed microcosm.

Me on the right at the World Bank selling coffee to Yemen's ambassador to the United States (2016)

Now we get to the juicy stuff. The world of egos, fiefdoms, and distorted transparency.

If you compete in this coffee-verse, one race to play, and one avenue of competition is who is more transparent. It's a race, up the supply chain directly to the farmer. The ultimate, gut punching triumph of transparency is a "nano-lot" of coffee traceable to one farmer. You drink the coffee in your home, and you see the picture of the guy who grew it. (A woman may have grown it too, but in Yemen they generally don't like to be photographed.)

This is all so juicy. So...nano-lots of ultimate traceability. This plays into another narrative as well. That narrative of Yemen's coffee being this enigmatic, difficulty to access—come war and naval embargoes—coffee jewel.

The output of this system is variously branded the World's Rarest Coffee / Most Expensive Coffee / Most High-Scoring coffee.

In contrast, Al Mokha is branded the World's First Coffee. I try to keep things laconic and verifiable.

In this transparency race, things quickly become extremely distorted. Get ready to have your mind blown.🤯🤯🤯 Transparency has two sides. One side is the truth—this is your coffee, this is who grew it; this is honesty and authenticity.

BUT, on the other side is fiefdoms. With transparency, anyone can steal your supplier, your star farmer. You've given the answer, you've spilled the beans, you've divulged your treasure map to the most rare, expensive, high-scoring coffee.

With transparency, what the customer sees above the waterline is happy farmers and bonhomie. But the fracturing is right below the surface. Read on for how the tension plays out.

Take happy farmers. A couple year ago, I got an email from some very unhappy farmers in Yemen. Their well-known counterpart in the USA that retails their coffee had sold the story of happy farmers producing rare expensive coffee. But the farmers were mad—their coffee was selling for upwards of $100/pound but they were only getting a small slice of that. So above the waterline—happy famers. But below the waterline—farmers looking for a new partner.

Three happy farmers delivering coffee cherries to the Rayyan Mill (while chewing qat)

How about bonhomie and spirit of cooperation with all? Companies selling rarity are undermined by anyone else selling the same thing. So in this way each retailer projects a spirit of bonhomie while at the same time being defensive of their turf. The bedfellow of rarity is a gatekeeper or an indispensable intermediary.

These fractures occasionally bubble to the surface, and here are two Yemen coffee companies going at it: Youtube Example

So how does a company give away their secrets but maintain their fiefdom? The video highlights one way, which is the root of the disagreement. Company A tries to trademark a word yet make it the taxonomic name for a genetic variety of coffee. It's a ridiculous maneuver because it's like trying to trademark the name of the city you live in. You're just going to piss people off. You can name your company or your castle, but you can't own the sun in the sky or the water in the sea.

Or for bonhomie, both companies have started non-profit foundations to share knowledge of Yemeni coffee between organizations working in Yemeni coffee. It sounds deeply meaningful but is pretty useless when you exclude your competitors—hence the duplication of effort. Ostensibly you're catering to the success of the entire industry when in reality you're catering to your curated brand narrative.

You get a sense of this weird competition landscape.

Here's a final example. In Yemen, there are very few companies doing the hard work of gathering, milling, and exporting coffee. Inevitably, the new entrants tag along to the existing supply chain infrastructure. Starting a company is easy, getting good is really hard.

Coffee terraces in Yemen. (Photo by the Rayyan Mill)

From time to time, I get an email from one of these new entrants; and they're looking to sell me wholesale quantities of Yemeni green coffee. This ain't my first rodeo, and I know that in Yemen, nearly everyone is buying from everyone else. Starting from scratch is ridiculously difficult. So when I get these emails, I press for as much detail as possible. My biggest interest is learning more about the evolving system of resale. Inevitably, when I press for details—who are you actually buying from—I receive no response or the individual just evades with a generic response that the coffee is from farmers in such and such place. But no real meaty details, I bought from A, who bought from B, who bought from C. Transparency is so hard to come by.

And that is the other side of transparency. Obfuscations.

It's nearly impossible to get the full story and instead you just get bits and pieces of an anodyne marketing story. You ask for real details, and the individual just clams up like a barnacle stuck to a boat.

So where does this leave Al Mokha? How do I fit in? This is a ten-million-dollar question.

The best part of my job is that I am FREE. A couple years ago, I still felt timid in the way that my competitors do. Do I share the names of my suppliers? Or is that too much transparency? If you know that I purchase coffee from the Rayyan Mill or the Haraaz Cooperative®, you or my competitors can just go around me and cut me out of the equation.

But I have an ace up my sleeve. I'm pretty good at my job, and I've been doing it long enough to know that my business advantage is far more than the names of my suppliers. This means my prices are fair and value is high...which means no one can undercut me. They can only seek to compete.

That's not all, however. I have a second ace up my sleeve and this one leaves me giddy with excitement. No big surprise, but I REALLY believe in what I do. Combine this unswerving purpose with fair prices and guess what? The best possible freedom. There's literally nothing to hide and everything to be proud of. I WANT you to see my operations because they're really cool.

That's a wrap. Get some coffee and if you're tempted to buy Yemeni coffee elsewhere, I absolutely encourage it. The open secret is that I have the best stuff, and you guys always come back. Thanks!!

Keep the questions coming,
Anda
(owner)

Rayyan Mill Blend
Light, Medium, Dark

$32
Shop Rayyan Mill
Al Wudiyan Valley
(Rayyan Mill)
**new coffee**
$32
Shop Rayyan Mill
Haraaz Cooperative
Light, Medium, Dark

$22.95
Shop Haraaz Cooperative
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